Module 55 REVIEW

• 55-1 What is personality, and what theories inform our understanding of personality?

• Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
• Psychoanalytic (and later psychodynamic) theory and humanistic theory have become part of Western culture. They laid the foundation for later theories, such as trait and social-cognitive theories of personality.

• 55-2 How did Sigmund Freud’s treatment of psychological disorders lead to his view of the unconscious mind, and what was his view of personality?

• Psychodynamic theories view personality from the perspective that behavior is a lively (dynamic) interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind. The theories trace their origin to Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.
• In treating patients whose disorders had no clear physical explanation, Freud concluded that these problems reflected unacceptable thoughts and feelings, hidden away in the unconscious mind. To explore this hidden part of a patient’s mind, Freud used free association and dream analysis.
• Freud believed that personality results from conflict arising from the interaction among the mind’s three systems: the id (pleasure-seeking impulses), ego (reality-oriented executive), and superego (internalized set of ideals, or conscience).

• 55-3 What developmental stages did Freud propose, and how did he think people defended themselves against anxiety?

• Freud believed children pass through five psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital).
• According to this view, unresolved conflicts at any stage can leave a person’s pleasure-seeking impulses fixated (stalled) at that stage.
• For Freud, anxiety was the product of tensions between the demands of the id and superego. The ego copes by using unconscious defense mechanisms, such as repression, which he viewed as the basic mechanism underlying and enabling all the others.

• 55-4 Which of Freud’s ideas did his followers accept or reject?

• Freud’s early followers, the neo-Freudians, accepted many of his ideas. They differed in placing more emphasis on the conscious mind and in stressing social motives more than sexual or aggression motives. Neo-Freudian Carl Jung proposed the collective unconscious.
• Contemporary psychodynamic theorists and therapists reject Freud’s emphasis on sexual motivation. They stress, with support from modern research findings, the view that much of our mental life is unconscious, and they believe that our childhood experiences influence our adult personality and attachment patterns. Many also believe that our species’ shared evolutionary history shaped some universal predispositions.

• 55-5 What are projective tests, how are they used, and what are some criticisms of them?

• Projective tests attempt to assess personality by showing people ambiguous stimuli with many possible interpretations; answers reveal unconscious motives.
• The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the Rorschach inkblot test are two such tests. The TAT provides a valid and reliable roadmap of people’s implicit motives, and responses have been shown to be consistent over time. The Rorschach has low reliability and validity, but some clinicians value it as a source of suggestive leads, an icebreaker, or a revealing interview technique.

• 55-6 How do contemporary psychologists view Freud’s psychoanalysis, and how has modern research developed our understanding of the unconscious?

• Today’s psychologists give Freud credit for drawing attention to the vast unconscious, to the struggle to cope with anxiety and sexuality, and to the conflict between biological impulses and social restraints, and for some forms of defense mechanisms.
• But Freud’s concept of repression, and his view of the unconscious as a collection of repressed and unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, have not survived scientific scrutiny. Freud offered after-the-fact explanations, which are hard to test scientifically. And research does not support many of Freud’s specific ideas, such as the view that development is fixed in childhood. (We now know it is lifelong.)
• Research confirms that we do not have full access to all that goes on in our mind, though today’s science views the unconscious as a separate and parallel track of information processing that occurs outside our awareness. This processing includes schemas that control our perceptions, priming, implicit memories of learned skills, instantly activated emotions, and stereotypes that filter our information processing of others’ traits and characteristics.

Multiple-Choice Questions

1. Carly’s therapist asks her to simply say what is on her mind rather than responding to specific questions or topics. Her therapist is making use of a technique known as
   1. the ego.
   2. self-efficacy.
   3. sublimation.
   4. free association.
   5. identification.
2. The Freudian concept of the ego is best described as
   1. operating on the reality principle.
   2. operating on the pleasure principle.
   3. focusing solely on the morality of an issue.
   4. the repression of disturbing thoughts.
   5. striving for perfection.
3. Ella was an aggressive child in middle school. In high school, she is a successful three-sport athlete because she channels her aggression into sports. Freud would suggest that this is due to the defense mechanism of
   1. repression.
   2. reaction formation.
   3. displacement.
   4. projection.
   5. regression.
4. What did Carl Jung call the shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history?
   1. Neurosis
   2. Archetypes
   3. Collective unconscious
   4. Inferiority complex
   5. Terror management

Practice FRQs

1. Nadina is struggling to decide whether to buy a sweater that she really cannot afford. According to Freud, what role would each of the following play in her decision?
   • Id
   • Superego
   • Ego

Answer

1 point: In Freud’s view, the id is the impulsive part of our personality. Nadina’s id would cause her to buy the sweater, even though it is too expensive. Page 580

1 point: The superego is Nadina’s conscience and may cause her to feel guilty about buying a sweater that she cannot afford. Page 580

1 point: The ego operates on the reality principle and will help Nadina make the final decision about whether to buy the sweater. The ego will balance the desires of the id with the demands of the superego. Page 580

2. Describe the following two projective tests and state one criticism of these types of test.
   • Thematic Apperception Test
   • Rorschach inkblot test

(3 points)